An open-source payment gateway is commonly misunderstood to be a cost-free service. An open-source solution might be a good choice if a new company spends little money on payment processing. Nonetheless, this is not the situation.
There are no cost-free, open-source payment processing solutions currently available.
A PCI-compliant environment must be kept even if you “accidentally” find a free, open-source payment gateway (annual PCI audits cost about $20-$25K). The product must also be cluster-deployed. This means you’ll need to keep tabs on at least 4–5 nodes (for your database, etc.). You will also need to establish a partnership with an acquiring bank. As a result, you’ll need to go through the process of integrating with a payment gateway. Then, a system for registering new merchants, supplying them with the necessary information, and reconciling their payments must be developed. Besides, additional connections and EMV certifications will be necessary if you need terminal solutions.
The many advantages of open-source payment infrastructure for commercial use
It’s important to keep in mind that open-source payment platforms are flexible and adaptable systems that may be built upon. They are completely open to having their code modified in any way.
Generally speaking, open-source payment gateways have the fundamentals covered. The flexibility of payment gateways and the ability to add new modules is greatly enhanced by this. In addition, companies may tailor what they need most to take payments online, expanding on the standard features for online enterprises.
Developers may easily add new functionality to the payment system when given access to the source code. For instance, firms may increase their global reach by accepting a wider variety of payment types.
Costs of an Open Source Payment Gateway
There are typically three main categories of fees that make up the total amount a merchant pays to their payment gateway provider:
- For instance, there may be per-transaction costs levied by the gateway. Only through direct interfaces with Visa and/or MasterCard can interchange and settlement fees be removed. Our studies and observations have shown, however, that direct integrations of this kind are worthwhile only when processing volumes are really high.
- The costs made by the gateway’s affiliated acquiring bank (additional fees to the base processing price). It’s possible to lower the fees attached to surcharges. The fees you must pay to an acquirer are contingent on the volume of transactions you handle and the terms of your arrangement with the acquirer.
- The fee incurred by using a card brand’s network, such as Visa or Mastercard. There is no way around paying the processing fee to the card brands for network access, and cutting this expense will take a lot of work.
While you can save certain charges by establishing your own payment gateway, doing so will also cause you to incur additional expenses (build it from the ground up or adopt an existing open-source payment gateway solution). In particular, you’ll have to shell out money for things like yearly PCI audit processes, certification fees with acquirers, server hosting, and the wages of developers and support staff. The annual cost might potentially exceed $100,000.
Therefore, it is only beneficial to take an open-source payment gateway solution in-house or to create a product from scratch if the savings from the removal of certain gateway-related costs surpass the annual expenses of gateway upkeep, PCI audit, certifications, etc. Large enough processing volumes are required for this to be possible. If reality checks and calculations reveal yearly savings of $200,000, the possibility of establishing your own payment gateway becomes quite significant.
Our recently released recommendations for cutting costs cover specific transaction processing-related cost elements in great detail.
Our recently released recommendations for cutting costs cover specific transaction processing-related cost elements in great detail.
The functionality of the UniPay System
The UniPay Gateway is an open-source payment processing system that can be customized to fit your brand. It has several cutting-edge options that are crucial for today’s enterprises. Among these include the ability to process ACH transfers and use a variety of credit and debit cards. Through UniPay’s many worldwide connectors, we can handle foreign payments and more.
Features tailored to the PayFac system are part of the software bundle with integration logic. Among these, numerous integrations have already built logic for handling chargebacks and recurring billing. UniPay provides an omnichannel mobile payment system and a dependable EMV terminal solution, both of which are available as open source.
You can get a license for the program in question and then use that license to gain entry to the code that has been modified to meet your company’s specific requirements.
A number of Fortune 500 firms are among UniPay’s satisfied customers. UniPay’s key benefit is that it is not limited to corporate clients. We provide options for people who can only pay a tiny monthly charge, so everyone can benefit from our product.
A hosted solution is a good place to start, and it may even be possible to upgrade later. You may then obtain a license for the code and deploy the product to your data center at a later date. United Thinkers is providing a fantastic choice here. This eases the transition into payment processing for new enterprises. As their numbers increase, they will undoubtedly make progress.
Your processing volumes must be sufficiently high, and the costs of gateway maintenance must be less than the savings generated by the removal and reduction of specific fees for you to justify investing in an open-source payment gateway solution or building payment gateway software from scratch.
You are able to get in touch with us in case you’re contemplating getting your own payment gateway.